


Oculus

by PermianExtinction



Series: Know Thine Enemy [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Humor, Espionage, Gen, Multi, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 03:59:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/pseuds/PermianExtinction
Summary: After receiving a tipoff about an ominous new creation that can 'see everything' in the galaxy, the Resistance sends Rose and Rey to infiltrate a ship belonging to the Attendants, mysterious alien allies of the First Order.At the same time, General Hux is looking to turn those allies to his own side as he schemes against the newly (self) appointed Supreme Leader.But all of them will discover a well-kept secret about the First Order once their paths converge...





	Oculus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kereia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kereia/gifts).



> The Attendants are the robed purple fellows who lurk off to the side in Snoke's throne room, and the oculus is the viewing scope that Snoke uses to show Rey the Resistance life pods being destroyed.

_The First Order has built an eye that can see everything._

 

“Do you know when you’re being watched?” 

Rey might not have heard the question. She’s fastening her helmet; fog forms on her transparent faceplate as she exhales, probably tasting the stale, cottony texture of the recycled air. To Rose, fully kitted up next to Rey, that air is familiar, since exosuits were often needed to brave the coldest latitudes on Hays Minor. She doesn’t think Rey is used to it, though. She wishes she’d asked, _Have you ever been on a spacewalk?_ instead of the strange thought that her mouth blurted out into the suit’s microphone. 

“You mean… with the Force?” Rey asks.

“With the Force, yeah,” Rose says, relieved. “I mean that normal tickle at the back of your neck when you think someone’s looking at you; do you get that, but more, um, accurate?”

Rose listens to Rey’s steady breathing. It comes in a regular pattern of in-four, hold-four, out-four. Rose unconsciously copies her. 

Then Rey scrunches her lips in thought. “I just thought it was normal. But it must have been the Force all along.” She dutifully concentrates, while Rose squirms with unease. She hadn’t meant to imply Rey wasn’t normal. “I don’t feel anything right now. Do you?” 

“I’m a little jittery.” Rose widens her stance and balls her fists, facing the airlock. “Let’s do this. And you know what? Don’t tell me if you think they can see us. Not until we’re on the other side.” _Because there won’t be anything we can do about it._

She carefully phrases it like that — _until we’re on the other side_ — to tell a story where, whether her new souped-up power baffler and Rey’s psychic cloaking technique work or not, they _will_ make it across. And then deal with whatever comes up. 

“Got it,” Rey agrees, and gives a thumbs up. 

They both toggle the levers on the baffler boxes attached to the fronts of their suits. Rose imagines she can feel the fuzzy static overlaying her body’s heat signals. Rey is tapping buttons on the airlock release panel. Their ship has been darkened to minimal power output, and if it weren’t for the magnetized boots, both of them would be floating. 

The door unseals and rolls aside. Because the suit is thick, Rose can’t feel the wind at her back besides the push towards the void. The airlock is briefly ringed with faint streams of freezing air. Rose and Rey lock arms. Their feet leave the floor. Rey reaches out, splaying her fingers. 

Something Rose really can feel, not like gravity suddenly shifted to make the airlock the new down, but like a hand closing around her and lifting her out of the ship the way you might take a doll from a dollhouse, launches them into space.

 

Three hours and twenty-six minutes. That’s how long their journey will take. Not counting the time spent drifting their ship towards a nearby asteroid and waiting hours for the rock to ponderously rotate so the exit faced the right direction. Rey’s Jedi texts were no help with the numbers, so when they planned the mission they ran their own experiments to get real data on how much of physics the Force could flaunt. How fast could Rey propel herself and a companion in null-g? How far away did an object have to be to be able to pull on it, as well as push away from an anchor? How much acceleration was possible? 

_Well, why not?_ Leia had said, eyes all sparkles. _I’m over ships. Give me a witch’s broom and a purrgil potion. You know, I think no one ever tries these things because it would mean we’ve always been magic, no matter what we’re flying._

But for now, it’s a slow magic. Seen from the closest point to it on the asteroid field, the Attendant ship is the size of a rice grain. Three hours and twenty-six minutes of watching it grow.

 

The star destroyer takes half a second to appear and it consumes the view. Rose cranes her neck upwards and sees the semblance of a gray city grid waiting for her to plummet headfirst, as soon as gravity takes her. Her sense of direction spirals out of control before it rights itself. She clings to Rey’s arm. They’ve only been out here for what feels like an hour, and she’s almost been lulled by the emptiness, even as she has new appreciation for how imposing and dreadful it is. So when the sharp silhouette of the ship cuts through the open space, it cuts into her soul, too. 

“Forget what I said—!” Rose splutters.

“I know, I know! I don’t think they see us yet!” 

“We need to get to a blind spot!” Rose points, finger waggling like one of the sensor pendulums her sister used in her civilian job to sense veins of ore, until it dowses a patch of hull that her instincts want to trust. She’s gambling on a lot of instinct. The undersides of star destroyers all bristle with turrets, but most of those are automatic unless the crew is expecting a fight. Rose believes in her bafflers, so their biggest enemy right now would be someone’s naked eye. 

Rey points her hand in the same direction as Rose’s, a spot just aft of the huge rectangular hole of the hangar bay, squints her eyes, and finds her grip on the hull somewhere. The Force starts pulling her towards it, and Rose hangs on for the ride. 

“They’re so close,” she groans, as adrenaline runs up and down her legs, prickling her toes in their insulated boots. The chances of running into an object coming out of hyperspace were so small, unless you were aiming for a debris field. She’d heard of ship collisions, but at least then you got an explosion, same as any other unfortunate end. “What if they’d landed on top of us? What are the odds of getting stuck in a wall?”

“I think star destroyers are about seventy percent empty space…?”

“Ah! Okay.” Rose exhales. A bizarrely comforting fact. “We’ve beat worse odds than that.” They’ll probably have to, right now, to get out of this mess alive. 

They land against the ship’s hull at an angle, tumbling and skidding to cool down their momentum. Rose lets go of Rey and grabs a protruding ridge of durasteel, and tries to figure out if she wants to be hanging from a ceiling or a wall, or crouching on a floor. 

Rose catches her breath, wishing she could wipe her face. Instead, the drops of sweat detach and float as a mist when she flicks her hair too quickly while turning her head. She manages to keep her teeth from gritting together too tightly. Her pulse is holding steady, rapid but not rising. “Do we need a new plan? It’s the same plan, isn’t it? We’re sneaking aboard a ship. Should we try this one instead?” 

“I wish it were that simple!” Rey reaches for the saberstaff handle strapped to her back. “What’s the Order _doing_ here? What if that tip-off about the oculus was a trap?” 

“If it was, they sprung it too early.” Rose hesitates. Presses her palm to the hull. “Okay, I know don’t have the Force, but I can _feel_ …”

Rey copies her, senses the vibrations. “You’re right. It feels like something—”

“Something in the hangar bay is moving.” Rose sucks in a lungful of recycled exosuit air. “Hey, Rey. Are you up for something crazy?” 

 

“I insist on accompanying you for this excursion,” the _Pulverizer_ ’s matriarch croaks brightly, stumping her aged self up the shuttle ramp while General Hux backs away, mood souring by the second.

_Oh, you do, do you? Chain of command what?_ Is it any surprise she’s being meddlesome, though? Hux had had to rely on some capricious types ever since Kylo Ren’s coup. The types of people willing to meddle in the fate of the Order, just for the hell of it. That includes the old woman currently trying to barge in on his meeting with Attendants — and it includes the Attendants themselves, the unfathomable alien allies that the First Order once relied on for survival out here in the Unknown Regions, who could always be found as tall purple-robed shadows lingering in the corner of the throne room of the _Supremacy_. 

Hux quickly slots himself between a pair of stormtroopers ascending ahead of him, trying to form a human blockade so the hag is forced to turn back simply for lack of anywhere else to go. The troopers waver, trying not to topple over the sides of the ramp. “And leave your post—” he starts to object. 

“—to my capable first officer, yes. Oh, what’s the difference anyway, he can do just about anything I can on the bridge.” She waves a hand flippantly. “You should have someone experienced with you if you’ll be meeting with the Attendants. Someone who won’t underestimate them. No offense, but a guy your age wouldn’t remember the exodus the way we do.” 

Everyone aboard this blasted ship knows what Hux is doing right now would count as treason to the one person whose opinion on treason matters over all others — Kylo Ren. Put that together with the fact that the little old ladies of the Order, being what they are — relics of Imperial arrogance, and usually also grandmothers to whole broods of subadults — never seem to honor rank over seniority, and Hux is left with Vice Admiral Deltic’s antics. The woman knows perfectly well that if Hux displeases her, she can snitch to the Supreme Leader, but on top of that she must still see him as a child. They all do. 

“I remember _quite_ well—” But what if _she’s_ Kylo Ren’s mole? Hux agonizes over this thought, while Deltic backs him into the shuttle. She simply refuses to stop, and Hux can scowl all he likes but he can’t handle this kind of unflinching confidence. It is almost easier to stand up to Ren, because that man oozes insecurity. 

“Oh, I’m sure it made up some formative childhood memories. But I was there for the real negotiations, and what they put in your school holobooks is never what _really_ happened.” Vice Admiral Deltic lowers herself onto one of the seats while the shuttle prepares for takeoff — _not_ on Hux’s orders, he notes. 

Hux swivels his head from the cockpit to the woman, not sure who to wrestle his command back from first. He fights an urge to punch the wall. “I don’t need a history lesson right now, _Vice Admiral_.”

“I think you might,” Deltic says, getting comfortable, rolling her shoulders, adjusting her belt so it doesn’t pinch her gut. Though she was once trimmer and even taller (though Hux’s oldest memory of her is, of course, from when he was a child), she is now a stout, slightly portly septuagenarian with a bob of curly white hair. And Hux will give her credit that she is one of the few in the Imperial generation who still embraces change. That, or she enjoys rubbernecking at imminent disasters. It doesn’t inspire much confidence in Hux that she wants to come along, because in his experience, that means he’s doing something crazy that will have a good chance of blowing up in his face. Just like Starkiller, and another reason why Deltic can take such liberties with him is that, with her background in planetary science, she was the one who compiled the reports on what could destabilize the superweapon’s core. _And_ she apparently won a betting pool for how much energy the ensuing explosion would release, on the supposedly hypothetical chance of Starkiller being destroyed. 

In short, Deltic is terrifying, and can brandish a dreadful “I told you so” over Hux’s head. He purses his lips tightly and lets her speak.

“Because if you recall,” she says, “it was after her last meeting with the Attendants that Grand Admiral Sloane disappeared, and Snoke rose to power. I think you find that encouraging, because you’d like to be Snoke right now. You’d like to be the one who takes the throne, with their blessing, their technology triumphing over Ren’s magic. It’s a gamble, but I can see it working out for you.” She taps a finger to her chin thoughtfully. “As long as you don’t happen to offend them in whatever way Rae Sloane must have, which remains a mystery. I served under Sloane, you know—”

“We all know,” Hux mutters.

“On her first command,” Deltic continues blithely, “and she always appreciated my advice—” 

_I bet she didn’t, you chatterbox_ , Hux thinks. One thing he remembers vividly about Sloane is that she hated being interrupted. 

“—even if she was more cautious than I’d have liked. You might not be cautious, I’ll give you that, but how do you know you’re not going to repeat her mistakes?”

Deltic sounds like a reporter eagerly badgering a scandal-ridden politician for answers, more than a naval officer discussing tactics. She must be so sure this will be Hux’s downfall, the third and final disgrace of the past year. She doesn’t think she’s sitting with the next Supreme Leader, she thinks she’s ferrying a fool to his doom. _How do you know you’re not going to repeat the mistakes of everyone who doubted me?_ Hux spits back, in his mind.

“Your concern is noted,” he says stiffly. “Well, if you think this is such a bad idea, why are you here?”

Vice Admiral Deltic forms a pyramid with her fingers. “Because someone ought to do something about that silly brat Kylo Ren. And because I wagered he’d only last six months as Supreme Leader, and we’re coming up on four.”

Hux remembers why he — occasionally — likes her. “Good,” he says, smiling thinly. The smile briefly becomes a sneer. “But don’t forget I outrank you.”

 

“A coup,” Rose breathes. “That ratty general is planning a coup. That’s Hux in there.”

Like a newly split pair of mynocks, the two of them have latched onto the hull of the shuttle, reaching a safe spot on the underside, in the crook of one of the ship’s tall black wings, after precariously crawling around the propulsion jets.

They _probably_ won’t be spotted. 

Rose has coaxed her bafflers into doubling as spy gear; because they’re scrambling energy signatures by canceling out incoming vibrations, they can hear those vibrations perfectly. And they’re inquisitive, for AI, ready to learn and improvise, just like their maker. When she lies down flat on the exterior of the shuttle, the conversation going on inside comes in loud and clear. 

“Is he the one you bit? You must have made an impression on him.” 

“What, is that how you got Kylo Ren to kill Snoke?”Immediately, Rose regrets saying it, hopes that Rey is fond of raunchy banter. Is it too obvious of her to be making this into a conversation about men-who-are-not-Finn?

“You know what? I think it’s how they are.”

“You bit him?” 

“I _beat_ him. Twice. You see it in small-time gangs, like the ones always after me on Jakku. They all want to fight each other to the top but they’re afraid being humiliated if they lose. But if an outsider gets the better of one of them, that one hasn’t got anything to lose, and they might just go for it.”

This is a glimmer of a side of Rey that Rose is suddenly intrigued by. Rey is usually so friendly and even-tempered. You’d forget that she raised herself on a harsh and barren world, and would need to be canny. _You know what?_ Rey asks, as if she’s never had to think about it before.

But something grabs Rose’s attention as she keeps listening. The other speaker… 

Recognition punches her in the throat. “I know her. The woman with Hux. _I know her too_.” She can hear her own voice blacken with rage. 

Rey is staring at her, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, before her brow furrows in sympathy. 

Memories are flooding fast into Rose’s mind, and maybe Rey is picking up echoes of pain. Rose tries not to spray spit as she speaks. “She helped kill the Otomok system. I remember the holos they made about Hays Minor’s atmosphere and tectonic activity. At first they denied anything was wrong, to keep us working on schedule. And then when they couldn’t hide how bad it was, they blamed us. Our old mining techniques were the problem. _She_ would come on the Net and tell us how we already ruined our planet, and the ore would degrade if they slowed extraction, and it was _selfish_ to let it all go to waste.”

“Rose…”

“You know what I’d really like to do right now? Yeah. Take your lightsaber and cut a hole in this ship. Like the hole they cut out of my world. Just let the cold in.” Rose shuts her eyes tight, trying to squeeze the fury out through her sinuses. “But it won’t… bring it back.” _I thought I was past this… the anger and hate._

Rey bites her lip. “And I… um… can’t let you do that.”

“I know you can’t!” Rose snaps. “I didn’t mean—” She bites her own tongue, because anything else, like slamming her fist against the ship, would give them away. “I wouldn’t really do that, _obviously_. Sometimes you have to say what you feel. And be honest. It’s better than lying and saying you’re fine.”

Rey softens her voice, but she tries to defend herself. “I hear you, but… sometimes all it takes is a moment. If I were you, Rose, I’d be… _I_ might slip. Everyone has their limits. Even Luke did… Well, these two might deserve it, but more like them would take their place.” 

“I know that. We agree, Rey.” Rose sighs. Rey must feel a terrible burden, having to be _the_ Jedi, not just a warrior, but somehow wise and in tune with everything good in the universe. Having to worry about her own power being dangerous. She wants to tell Rey, no one really _needs_ that kind of burden. “That’s why it can’t ever just be one person. We all slip up. But we all feel, we need to feel. I want to be brave enough, and angry enough, to take a stand. Like Finn was on Crait. I know I stopped him. He was right to feel the way he did, _and_ I was right. We needed each other for it to work out.” She adds hastily, “And he needs you too, and everyone else.” 

She feels a hand press down on her shoulder. “I think I know what you mean,” Rey says. “It’s about balance.”

“Yeah. Balance.” 

Rose lifts her head and watches the larger ship approach. They’ll be docking in its belly in just a moment. It looks more like a creature than a vessel, or maybe a float in an ominous parade. Its body is dark and segmented, with huge sheets of barely visible cloth pointing in every direction, thin sails fluttering in a faint breeze of electromagnetic waves.

Those sails are an array of long-range telescopes, more powerful than any built before.

It’s why they had to approach the ship so cautiously, with a strike team small enough to be just a speck floating by. “Hopefully they’re too busy watching what’s halfway across the galaxy to spot something under their noses,” Rey murmurs.

 

Hux exits the command shuttle and finds the hangar empty except for two of the tall, purple-cloaked figures standing on either side of the bay doors. They don’t move — waiting for him to approach? He curls his fists tightly behind his back. “Let’s go, Vice Admiral.” 

Then he marches across the bay, at a pace he knows Deltic can’t keep up with. 

He tenses, and slows, when the Attendants remain motionless, and the door remains closed. He’d like to find their silence more agreeable, but they are as tall as Snoke once was and are similarly unnerving. Their insectoid face-masks, with opaquely glowing lavender eyes, leer down at him.

“General, sir!” Hasty clanking footsteps accompanying a synthesized voice. It’s the protocol droid they’ve brought along, coming up behind him. “I am receiving a message from the Attendants. They are saying— that in their missive, did they not request you come alone?”

“Of course they did,” Hux agrees. “Vice Admiral, you heard them? You’ll have to stay behind, I’m afraid.” 

“What? Really?” An exasperated huff from Deltic.

“They say the woman is not the problem,” the droid interjects. “She may proceed. Your soldiers, on the other hand.”

“Ah.” Hux grinds his teeth together. “Then…” He smiles thinly. “Of course the troopers will remain aboard the ship. As a show of good faith. Just myself, the droid—”

“Splendid,” Deltic chirps. 

The Attendants nod slowly, and make mirrored gestures towards the door, which unseals and slides open.

They flank Hux and Deltic as the officers proceed onwards. The door rumbles shut. 

 

“This is the part where we were supposed to steal a disguise,” Rey says, frowning at the pile of stunned troopers on the floor of the shuttle. “But we can’t sneak around as stormtroopers if they’re not supposed to be going anywhere!”

Rose pulls off her exosuit helmet, wipes her face, and shoves her blaster back into its holster. “I’m a little short for a stormtrooper, anyway,” she admits. “Good teamwork, though.” 

“The element of surprise helped.”

“We can always try to steal the ship and get back to ours, in the asteroid field. We’ve gathered plenty of intel—”

“Are we ever going to get another chance to take their oculus out? This isn’t just about the Resistance. If the Order can see anywhere, they’ll… have the whole galaxy in their palm.”

“But the Order _doesn’t_ have the oculus. If General Finger Food is planning to take over by getting these guys on his side—” 

Rey snorts loudly. “General what?”

“I’m allowed to be proud of that. I hope he never forgets.” Rose sits down at the pilot seat and tugs on the controls. “They’re locked down, but I think I can get around it. Help me out? I mean, either way, we need a ride out of here. As long as that star destroyer is hanging around, we can’t call for an extraction.”

“Rose…!” An urgent whisper.

She spins the chair around. Rey is pointing out of the shuttle, at the hangar. A lone Attendant is crossing the floor. 

“What do you think?” Rey adds, in a less urgent, and more devious, way.

 

Rey staggers forward, and stiffens her back. “Okay!” she says brightly, and a bit of exertion comes through in her tone. 

“Okay?” Rose is wavering, until she takes a deep breath and lets it all out. Then she starts laughing, almost wheezing. “Rey. You’re not as comfortable as a fathier.”

It turns out they _can_ fill the tall purple robes, as long as Rey hoists Rose up onto her shoulders and Rose dons the hood and mask over her helmet (and it’s almost impossible for her to see, but they need their helmets on so they can talk in private). Rey is providing the arms and legs, though the arms must be unusually short. The Attendants’ rounded stomachs turn out to be padding, which hides the unusually lumpy midsection of Rey’s head and Rose’s legs bunched around it. 

Do they manage to resemble the segmented, chitin-shelled creature they left stunned in the shuttle with the troopers? Only one way to find out.

“I’ve got this. I feel _strong_. The Force is with me.” The Attendant they’ve created lurches and rights itself as Rey takes a step. “Remember. _Balance_.”

“Ah ha ha. Right. Balance.” Rey clearly _is_ strong, Rose admits. She’s recovering from the initial wobbles and her shoulders are becoming a much firmer seat. Maybe she’s lightening the load by lifting Rose with her powers.

It must have been more than a decade ago that Rose last rode around on someone like this. Paige would play racing games with her friends who had younger siblings of their own. But they stopped after too many accidents, riders and steeds getting sprained wrists and broken noses when they fell. 

“Yep. These are real Jedi tactics,” Rose says.

“They could be! We don’t have many options— Wait!” Rey suddenly hisses. “More incoming. Act natural.”

_Act_ _natural_ , Rose repeats. Whatever’s natural for the head and upper body of a towering violet-garbed being intelligent enough to build advanced tech the likes of which the galaxy has never seen. She puts thoughts of the absurdity out of her mind and wills herself to _believe_ she is an Attendant. When she tries squinting through the eyepieces, the hangar bay is barely visible. More of the silent aliens are crossing the room, making smooth but vehement gestures with their arms. 

“They’re annoyed with us,” Rey reports at a whisper. “Because we should be somewhere the rest of them are. A big hall.” 

Maybe as long as they don’t bisect themselves by falling over, they’ll fit right in. _Here we go,_ Rose thinks. _Rose in Disguise, Part Two._

“This could work out,” she says. “If they don’t catch us, we’ll know more about what’s going on in the First Order than most of the First Order.”

“We don’t even know if they’ll take his side. Once he’s gone—”

“However he goes.”

“Right. _Then_ we can deal with their all-seeing eye.” 

 

The sheen on the oculus seems to blink slowly at Hux from across the room as he enters. Demurely. Invitingly. Merely reflections moving across it, of the dim white stripes on the floor and ceiling radiating out from the center of the hall, providing the only light in it. Unlike the scope in the Supremacy throne room, which resembled a small, slightly domed window, this oculus is a sphere as wide as his arm span, seated on a metal plinth that comes up to his chin. 

It’s so pure, unsullied. Like a planet made of glass; right now it’s translucent, but as Hux steps closer, he thinks he can see reflections of stars rippling faintly over it.

This eye sees the universe. He is to believe that everything is reflected on its lens. 

He can’t get too excited yet, not without proof.

Deltic whistles appreciatively. “That is one beautiful specimen.” With that wide wolfish grin, her hunger for the device and all the power it holds is plain to see. Briefly, before he contains himself, Hux burns with jealousy. She had better not get too fond of it.

The Attendants have gathered on circular risers ringing the room, shuffling into place, a silent court. The two escorting the Order envoys take positions beside the clear crystal orb. 

The protocol droid speaks. “They are pleased you appreciate it. They have… expended many minds to hone it to perfection.” The droid pauses. “No? It is… _exploded_ many minds. I am corrected.”

Deltic clasps her hands, fascinated. “Like their heads _actually_ blew up?” 

“They are proud to accomplish such great mathematical feats that they boil their own brain matter.”

“Tell them _not_ to include that in the demonstration,” Hux says sourly, striding forward. Then he halts, startled by the oculus swiftly filling in with a black velvet starfield. 

“Looks like the show is starting,” Deltic murmurs.

And _what_ are they showing? Hux squints, and tries to triangulate the sector by the stars. He’s not as sharp about it as he was in his schoolboy years. Before he’s got a guess, the vision closes in on a cluster of ships, star destroyers. 

One massive vessel leads them. Making the rest of the ships look like mere scales flaking off the back of a dragon. 

Hux steps back, stomach twisting. _That’s the Supremacy_. 

On cue, a brilliant beam of light tears through the starboard wing. The ships behind it ignite in the spray of glowing debris. 

“Oops,” whispers Deltic.

_Why can’t her head blow up?_ Hux fumes. But he’s reeling from what he’s seeing. The image draws closer, as if a probe droid is watching these events unfold and broadcasting it to the viewing scope while it swoops in for a closer look. 

Time accelerates, the remaining ships form up over the pale surface of salt-encrusted Crait. The oculus continues drawing closer and closer until the battlefield is visible. The walkers, the cannon, the Resistance’s meager forces. 

“You realize what this is?” hisses Hux, jabbing Deltic with his elbow. “The _past_ , they can see the past!” 

“Shove off. Of course I realize,” Deltic grumbles. “Fine way to treat your elders.”

“ _Subordinate_.”

“Fine way to treat your subordinates.”

It’s not worth it to put her in her place, Hux decides. The ramifications of what they’re being shown have swelled in his heart beyond what any petty annoyance can prick and pop.

The battle on Crait passes by quicker than Hux would have liked. That was a disaster he needn’t take any undue credit for. In fact, it was a dark comedy act afterwards watching Supreme Leader Ren twist it into a supposed victory, not just to others but to himself, clearly. He became puffed up with pride about it — the day that Luke Skywalker died by his hand. 

If Hux earns the Attendants’ approval, he can rewatch it as many times as he pleases. Other moments that he’d been too tense to bother with at the time make for a more amusing drama. The oculus has come close enough to the action that you can see individual faces on the rebel fighters. 

And recognize them, in one case. FN-2187 and his companion survived. It was typical Phasma of to draw it out instead of being direct and efficient. 

Oh, of course the young woman from Otomok was sweet on 2187. From this angle you can see her leaning up out of her crashed ship’s cockpit, kissing his lips, before she collapses. Hux notices how his fingers have tightened, closing around the now-faded bruise where that vixen tried to gnaw them off. What else were you expecting? he thinks, privately. Weren’t you goading her into it, really? In that especially private way, thoughts sequestered in a huddle, overwritten by other thoughts barking orders at them. 

The girl who bites and kisses might well be dead, though 2187 dutifully drags her off back to the base. 

Hux is oddly preoccupied with — irritation, it must be, that he let the enemy make so much as a scratch on him. 

Something the oculus is privy to but he was not — the Resistance escapes aboard their old, surely dilapidated freighter. Is it really the same ship that destroyed the second Death Star, or another of the same model they’re using just to keep that symbol alive? 

One of the Attendants standing beside the sphere gestures up at the ship soaring over the field of view on the oculus. 

The freighter makes the leap into hyperspace. 

The viewing scope pulls back, with the planet shrinking into a tiny dot, then a speck, then nothing. Hux holds his breath as the starfield shifts. But then — 

He punches his palm with his fist. _Yes!_

The ship emerges out of the void. 

“We can still track them,” Deltic says, slow and satisfied. 

_It will only be ‘we’ if they give us their technology._ “Imagine it. Watching anyone, anywhere. As long as you know where they were once, you can tail them wherever they go.” The Empire fell because it couldn’t keep an eye on everything. Insurrection flourished in corners of the galaxy that went overlooked, and rebels would dart in and out of their hiding places to make quick attacks. They won’t stand a chance now. 


End file.
